Dumbires

Umpiring howlers denied New Zealand the cup it deserved

- Karthik Ravindranath

Long after the English euphoria over “the greatest World Cup final ever” subsided, rage and anguish kept bubbling up over the raw deal New Zealand got.

The reason for the rage wasn’t any Hand of God or Bat of God, but the Finger of Man. New Zealand fielder Martin Guptill threw the ball to the wicketkeeper; it accidentally hit Ben Stokes’s extended bat as he dived to complete a second run and raced to the boundary. Even though the third umpire—Rodney Tucker of Australia—was consulted, the decision to award six runs was taken in haste. It was evident, no doubt, that Stokes had not blocked the throw intentionally. But the umpires forgot a basic cricketing law and failed to check whether the batsmen had crossed each other when Guptill released the ball. Surely, a couple of replays were warranted before awarding six runs.

The umpires mucked it up, the International Cricket Council buried its head in the sand saying it would not comment on umpiring decisions as a policy, but the legendary umpire Simon Taufel stood up. It was a mistake, he said. Yet Taufel praised the umpiring team as “the best of the best”.

Sri Lankan umpire Kumar Dharmasena is, on paper, the best in the world. He won ICC Umpire of the Year, for the second time, in 2018. His South African colleague Marais Erasmus was Umpire of the Year in 2016 and 2017. On the fifth ball of the second over of the New Zealand innings, eagle-eyed Erasmas could spot that the ball had hit Guptill’s trouser pocket and not his bat or glove, before the wicketkeeper Jos Buttler caught it. But on the third ball of the next over, Dharmasena gave Henry Nicholls out LBW to a ball that was clearly bouncing over. The decision review system (DRS)—twitterati call it ‘Dharmasena Review System’—showed just how wrong the umpire was.